The first preseason game of the Celtics 02-03 season will be played in New York. In the early morning of October 8th, the Celtics team boarded a special plane to New York, and after five days of intensive training, they will have their first real combat drill, which will be a very important game for Leon, and the effect of the "best plan of their career" will be tested in this game.

Although it was only five days, the change Leon has brought to this team is obvious enough. First of all, no one will be late for training, and since the team's highest-paid Antoine Walker has been punished, those young people naturally dare not make mistakes. Leon fixed his time to go to the training gym at 8 o'clock in the morning, which also became the bottom line of the time for the players to train in the morning.

Secondly, the team did a lot of basic exercises during the five days, including shooting, passing, defending, and physical training, and many players felt like they were back in high school. On the contrary, Leon's various tactical drills are not frequently used in team training, and he will only watch tactical videos in the half-hour meeting before training, and then repeat some simple coordinated tactics in training.

Leon placed special emphasis on pick-and-roll and two- and three-man offense and quick offensive coordination, which they spent two-thirds of their time in tactical training.

After arriving at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, the Celtics did not drive west to their hotel near Madison Square Garden, as they had done in the past, but turned east to the satellite city of Hempstead, a suburban New York city, where the preseason game was played not at Madison, but at Hempstead's Nassau Coliseum. As old as Madison Square Garden, Nassau Arena was used as the home of the Nets in the ABA from '71-'77. After the Nets were merged into the NBA, it was no longer home to any professional team, but it still did the work of many tournaments.

The Celts stayed at a hotel near the Nassau Coliseum. Of course, it doesn't have the luxury of a New York Metropolitan Hotel, but a simple two-story inn where Celtic players live. And there are no professional training venues near the hotel except for the Nassau Coliseum, no way, who let this be a preseason game. Madison Square Square has more important events to play today, so this inconsequential preseason game has to be played in the countryside of New York.

Even if it's a long journey. Leon still decided to organize the whole team to go to the gymnasium at 3 p.m. for a simple workout, the main content of which was shooting.

"For an hour, we'll do an hour of shooting practice. However, I need to make it clear up front that our training is not going to end with a few hundred shots in a fixed place with the ball, which doesn't do anything but keep us up to the touch. We will be divided into three groups for practice, the first group will be the players who shoot well, and you will be doing anti-interference practice. The second group is the players who are still shooting consistently, and you are going to do the shooting practice. You'll only have one point. The third group is the guys who are at a lower level of shooting, and all you have to do is practice free throws! Of course, everyone does a five-minute switchback run before practice. In the gymnasium, Leon grouped the team's shooting practice.

Shooting is the first project that Leon paid close attention to after becoming the head coach of the Celtics, in the past season, Leon found that the Celtics' collective shooting training is still not systematic, and the players in the team's shooting training are mainly to maintain the feeling of shooting, and the real improvement still depends on the additional training after training or their own individual training in the summer. Leon believes that as the most important technical event in basketball, shooting must be practiced systematically by the whole team. Improve together.

The first assistant coach he hired for this purpose was Sigfried, an experienced shooter. He has a unique insight into the technique of shooting. As an older generation of players, the NBA was the first group of top shooters to reach a 40 percent shooting rate, and Sigfried has a lot of tips and tricks for training shots in poor training conditions. After accepting Leon's offer to be the Celtics' shooting coach, Sigfried spent two weeks sorting out the methods and techniques, and another month. He learned the new shooting techniques of modern basketball through various means, so he was exceptionally well prepared, giving the Celtics players a lot of help in shooting over the course of a week.

For example, he pointed out some of Reed's bad habits of shooting with his left hand, and because Reed's left hand was not a dominant hand, Sigfred asked Reed to use the "one-handed training method." That is, only the left hand is used to dribble, take the ball, and shoot the basket to enhance the feeling of shooting with the left hand and reduce the degree of stiffness. Another example is that he coached Pierce's shooting, thinking that Pierce relied too much on the power of the whole arm in shooting, especially the big arm, which would reduce the stability of the shot, and he felt that Pierce could appropriately increase the role of the forearm in the shooting action.

In short, Sigfried may not be as good as many players in the NBA in terms of shooting skills, his shooting posture is outdated, and his shooting speed is too slow, but as long as every player is observed and guided by him, there will always be a lot to gain. Three-point freaks like Antoine Walker, who is obsessed with his shooting skills, also heeded Sigfried's advice and focused on strengthening his fingers and wrists and improving his control of the ball.

So, Leon handed the players from the first group to Sigfried, who included Pierce, Arenas, Reed, Walker, and Wang Zhizhi. Leon divided Wang Zhizhi into the first group was something that no one expected, this yellow-skinned player who looked introverted and silent, did not have too many shining points after coming to the Celtics, his strength was not good, his speed was not good, and his shooting feeling was very good, which was rare among big men, but his confrontation did not reach the NBA level at all.

The second group of players, mainly Wahad, Malik Ciri, Joe Johnson and Tony Barty, is mainly involved in practicing fixed-point shooting. However, this fixed point is exquisite, and Leon has set several "best shooting points" for these players according to tactical needs and a large amount of data processing, that is, their shooting numbers and shooting percentage are the best at these points. Joe Johnson, for example, has his best shooting spots in the right corner of the three-point line, two steps inside the three-point line, the top of the arc, and a 45-degree three-point line on the left.

Leon will be in charge of the practice of these players, because he is the most accurate to find the point, which point is the best shooting point for which player, he knows in his heart.

The third group is a number of interior players, such as Portapenco, Blunt, Chris Anderson, Grant Long, Dareham Porter, etc., whose main task is to practice free throws, and first perform switchback running exercises and some simple strength exercises to simulate the fierce confrontation of the inside, and then practice free throws to ensure that they can still hit important service points after the fierce inside confrontation.

Dave Cowens is the overseer of this group.

The hour-long shooting practice was divided into an orderly period by Leon, who had just gotten into the groove when the time came, and instead of increasing the training time, Leon told the players to carry over the form into the evening game.

……………………

At half past six in the evening, Leon and the Celtics arrived at the Nassau Coliseum again, and after the shooting practice, Leon gave the players more than two hours to relax. As one of the offseason's talking points, Leon was certainly the focus of reporters, and was constantly chased by people on his way into the locker room asking questions, which he didn't get during his time as a scout and assistant coach.

"What does it feel like to coach a team with a history like Celtic?" A young reporter from The New Yorker kept chasing Leon to ask questions, and all of them were asking specious questions, and Leon knew that he was a novice when he heard it. He's quite familiar with the New York media, and it's clear that the reporters who come to cover this kind of preseason game won't be a famous person.

"You'll feel old." Leon gave a plausible answer.

"What do you expect from your players tonight?" The reporter continued, another boring question.

"I'm expecting them a hundred and fifty." Leon joked, then went into the locker room and shut out the reporters.

It was just a joke from Leon, but it almost came true.

The Celtics' first preseason game of the season, which starts at 7:30 p.m., becomes the Celtics' shooting training ground. From the beginning of the first quarter of the game, the Celtics' shooting rate was as high as 72 percent, and the starting Pierce, Walker, Barty, Reed and Arenas, each of the five can shoot from outside the mid-range, and the one-hour systematic, not high-intensity shooting training in the afternoon undoubtedly allowed the players to maintain a good hand.

When Arenas hit a long-range three-pointer at the end of the first quarter, the Celtics had a 44-31, 13-point lead in the first quarter, and 44 points was also a terrifying one-quarter score.

However, the crazy feeling of the Celtics did not end with the end of the first quarter of the game, although their shooting rate declined in the second and third quarters, but their offensive rhythm became faster and faster, and the simple, efficient and fast offensive ideas that Leon adhered to last season were fully implemented in this game, and the number of passes in the offense would not exceed three times, and the opponent would always have to grasp the foothold of the opponent. As long as the positional offense is formed, it is handed over to Walker or Pierce for singles, although it is simple and rough, but the player shoots too well, and the Knicks' defense is not effective, which makes the Celtics' score skyrocket.

When the Celtics scored more than 100 points in the third quarter, Knicks head coach Don Johning finally couldn't sit still, he called a long timeout and asked his players to step up their defense and not give the Celtics an easy chance to score.

But it was too late, the Celtics' scores soared all the way, and finally Leon was replaced by Wahad and Wang Zhizhi, but when Wang Zhizhi could hit three points, who else could stop the Celtics' attack?

Finally, when Wang Zhizhi missed the last three-pointer, the score between the two sides was fixed at 147:129, and the Celtics won the first game of the new season with crazy shooting and three-point performance at Nassau Stadium.

And this is just the beginning. (To be continued.) )